Setting Up Active Data for Testing

You should test active data sorting rules as an ongoing
maintenance task. Other than A/B testing, most testing takes place either
on a Staging or Sandbox instance. This is because the Storefront Toolkit,
used to examine search results, is available on Staging and Sandbox
systems, but not on Production.

If active merchandising is enabled,
then data is automatically imported into Production and Staging instances.
However, if active merchandising isn't yet enabled or you want to test on
a Sandbox instance, you must import active data to test. Salesforce
B2C Commerce provides two files of SiteGenesis data that you can use:
products-Sites-SiteGenesis.csv and
customers-Sites-SiteGenesis.csv. You can also edit these files to
represent your products and import them into the SiteGenesis site. If you
do this, you must also add your products to the SiteGenesis site to test.

Getting Active Data into Your Testing
Instance

To test active data sorting rules or customer groups
before you have enabled active data, you can import an active data file
provided with SiteGenesis into your Sandbox. If you have enabled active
data for your site, you can download the active data feed from your
production instance and import it into your Sandbox.

Note: The active data file, which normally contains data, is
collected on the storefront and aggregated by the Merchandising Analytics) process.
This file isn't the active data feed file, which is used to feed
additional attributes, such as costPrice and returnRate. However, you might
also want to create an active data feed file for testing. For information
on creating and importing the active data feed file, see Creating Active Data Feeds.

Using SiteGenesis Data to Test

If you want
to use sample data from SiteGenesis for initial tests, import the sample
active data files provided into B2C Commerce. For more information, see Importing Active Data CSV
Files. If you have data from your eCommerce site before moving to
B2C Commerce, such as information about sales or page views, you can also use
the SiteGenesis .csv files as examples and create your own data file.

Using Data from Your Production Instance
to Test

If you want to use data from your production site to
experiment with new sorting rules on your sandbox:

Modifying the Active Data Files for Specific
Tests

You can edit the SiteGenesis active data file or create a
test active data file for your site. If you are using the SiteGenesis
storefront to test your rules, you must make sure to use the original
names of the files after you edit them. If you are using your own
storefront to test, the file you import must follow the naming conventions
for active data feeds. The naming conventions are documented in Importing Active Data CSV
Files.

Editing the active data
File

Salesforce recommends that you use Notepad or another text
editor to construct or edit the file. If you use Excel to edit the file,
you must then open it in Notepad or another text editor and make sure it
conforms to the correct file format, as Excel removes the first blank
line, adds commas to the second line, and adds leading zeros to any
decimal values. Excel might also change the format of long numbers, such
as product IDs.

Although the active data file is in .csv format, it
also requires the following formatting: